On Alpha Centauri Humor

2,200 words

I was mumbling horny love poems up to the circle of buzzards, practicing my best Hank Chinaski imitation, legs sprawled out so that my dick and balls were peaking out my unzipped fly, shooting finger guns and shaking my hips at the passing cars: dudes, chicks, teenagers, thermonuclear families on their Nuevo México vacations—I didn’t give a fuck, man. I was single—recently unemployed—and ready to mingle.

Some Malboro sweetness floated skyward up out my lungs, scattering with the breeze. Bill Evans’s piano convos were fuzzing out the one speaker in my ’03 Dakota that still worked. “Boy, ain’t this the life,” fuckable Dean Moriarty monologued inside my limbics. “Open road forward and backward, going nowhere and anywhere.”

Of course, my sweet freedom got temporarily stilted somewhere in the empty between Tucumcari and Alburquerque when the Dakota’s fuel gauge started bobbing around empty, and I didn’t quite know where the next gas station was because I’d football-punted my phone into the Foss Reservoir in the heat of an admittedly childish tantrum. I ladled a hand into the cooler bungee-strapped in the back of the truck, slurping up some of the lukewarm water. The last two PBRs were begging for it, but I wanted to save them just in case my situation got desperate and I needed something to take the edge off.

The silence after a spat of jazzy nonsense either meant the CD had run its course, or the car battery finally died. By the sun’s position at the firmament’s apex, it was around noon, meaning the summer heat was only going to get worse. When I figured my coital invitations probably weren’t going to get me anywhere, I zipped up my jeans and started waving my thumbs around, trying to look trustworthy. I begged at no less than a hundred different cars before, from the east, came a motorcycle carrying some sunburnt, ape-hanging, mustached vaquero blanco in a ten-gallon sombrero and wrap-around shades, suede jacket twirling with its tassels and glimmering rhinestones—the man looked like the human embodiment of cocaine.

Dust kicked as he veered his speed machine onto the shoulder of I-40. I hopped with joy when he killed his engine and asked, “Where ya goin, brother?”

“Nowhere,” I said, cool and aloof, Clint Eastwood inflection, then clarified, “on account of my empty gas tank, y’know. But otherwise, nope, nowhere.”

“A drifter, huh? Well, I’m headed to Santa Rosa myself. I assume you’re headed west, too. You can catch a ride back here with enough gas to get your jalopy movin again. Why don’t cha hop on?”

I said, “Thanks,” and grabbed the pair of warm beers from the cooler. “What can I call you, stranger?”

“Call me Seb.” As I straddled the leather saddle, he kicked the engine on. “Look, a little dick-to-ass action is to be expected, but don’t go humpin up right in my crack, will ya?”

And we rode on, westward. Rugged landscape passed by, sun-bleached limestone and sandstone stacked in layers visible on the eroding walls of shallow canyon cutaways below red dusts and sparse shrubs begging the July sky for any rain. Flattened coyotes attracted the beaks of hungry vultures. The ancient, unfolding Permian horizon approached ahead of us, dotted with lonesome anthropologic remnants, abandoned cemeteries and derelict shelters forgotten with the interstate 40 advent.

Seb steered the bike into a gas station lot, a speck of near-nothing just east of Santa Rosa called Cuervo. He tickled the pump’s nozzle into the gas tank and asked, “You gonna go get somethin to put some gas in?”

“I don’t have any money,” I admitted, cracking open one of the PBRs to take a sip, lighting a cig next to the pumps like a cool rebel guy. It tasted even more like shit with the smoke and nicotine in my phlegm. I threw up in my mouth a little.

Seb chuckled. “Boy, you are fucked, ain’t ya? This is a bad stretch of country to run outta cash in.”

“Tell me about it.” Teasing a proposition, “Where you headed anyway?”

“South.”

“Las Cruces?”

“Roswell.”

“That UFO spot? You’re into all that alien bullshit?”

My dismissiveness didn’t seem to faze him. “It ain’t bullshit, man.”

“Aw, c’mon. Why are you going down there?”

“Naw, nope, you won’t believe me.”

“C’mon, tell me. What’s down in Roswell for you?”

“I’m meeting some people, thas all.”

“Other humans, or—?”

“Humans. Dick.”

“Fellow nuts, huh?”

“I said ya won’t believe me. And I was thinkin I was gonna go on and tell you my whole story here.”

“Awright, awright, I’m sorry,” I said, diplomatically. “Now, tell me why you’re going to Roswell.”

“Fine, I’ll tell ya so long as you show some respect. Let’s siddown inside where it’s cool, man.” He pocketed his keys and stepped to the front door. “Hey, and of you gimme that other beer, I’ll buy you lunch.”

The inside of the gas station was slimy, smelled like pine sol splashed over a rotting carcass—but, thank fuckin Jesus, it was air-conditioned. They didn’t have much in the way of real food, so I just picked myself a pack of spicy peanuts, and we sat across from each other in a diner-style booth at the back. Seb dropped a few stale, salty cheese crackers into his mouth and washed it down with the warm beer, wincing.

“Goddamn, that is awful. But I guess warm beer is still better than no beer, though.”

“Now, you gonna tell me about this Roswell UFO pilgrimage you’re going on?” I said.

“Awright, brother, but you gotta listen for real to this thing. You can’t interrupt or tell me I’m a liar. Deal?”

“Alright then.”

“I mean it, man.”

“Alright, yeah. Tell me.”

“Awright, then, here we go. So, I’m from up in Laramie. Thas in Wyoming. I got my wife and my boy up there, living on the homestead with my mom and dad and brother. Around the middle of November is when me and my brother’ll go up on the mountain and find a elk or two to last us through the winter, and usually then some. Well, thas just what we were doing this last November when it happen.”

“What happened?”

“Jus listen. You sure are impatient for a man with nowhere to be.” He went on, “So, we were up there traipsin around with our rifles through the woods. We hadn’t seen shit all day besides, y’know, squirrels an shit. We usually split up—cover more ground—so I was by my lonesome. It was getttin late at this point, and I jus knew we weren’t gonna find shit, so I was walkin round pretty careless. Well, I near shit my pants when I come out into a meadow onto this big fuckin herd of mule deer, prolly about a dozen or more. Now, understand, these deer shoulda heard my ass stompin round and bolted before I ever even seen em, but they was jus in that clearing, still as a buncha goddamn statues. And when I say they were still as statues, I mean it. The deer, they’ll walk around some, graze, flick round their tails—they weren’t moving a single muscle, not a single one. If I had a camera, I coulda been in a National Geographic or some shit. Seeing them all like that scared the hell outta me, though. You ever see somethin that just ain’t right? I could feel somethin buzzin deep in my balls, tellin me to just get the fuck outta there. Well, my dumb ass ignored that instinct. I brought up my rifle and aimed it right at that buck, only one there—big fuckin rack on that boa. I mean, he was perfect, not even ten yards away—no way in hell I coulda missed. So, I shot him. Nothin happened. No blood, no wound, like the goddamned bullet jus turned into air. I was more freaked out now, but I was still curious, so I walked up to em. Now, deer ain’t all peaceful like that Bambi joint—those fuckers’ll gore your ass if you scare em. They’re brutal sonsabitches, serious. So as I step up to em, it’s like I walked into a house or something—the air was still, it was dead-quiet. I had this feelin in my guts, kinda like when you’re driving down a hill and suddenly start going up again and it makes your stomach feel like it’s all floatin. You know what I mean? The next thing I know, it’s nighttime and I’m out in that clearing with my fuckin dick in the dirt like a jackass, pants round my knees and my shirt on backwards—and I had the worst headache I ever had in my goddamn life. I wasn’t too far from the house, so I fix my clothes and walk the mile or two down off the mountain in the dark. Shit, I was scared. I was thinkin maybe I jus passed out and had a weird nap out there or had a mini-stroke or some shit like that. But when I got home, woke the family up—shit, they all bout pissed themselves—I’d been gone an entire fuckin week, man.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” I said, suckling the salt off a new peanut.

“It ain’t bullshit, brother.”

Seb reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a crumpled newspaper clipping. Coffee stains obscuring the headline, Laramie Man Returns Home After A Week Missing.

“There’s no way.”

“It happened, believe it or not. That’s why I gotta get down to Roswell. You wanna keep mouthing off now?”

“You think you were abducted?”

“I know it, man. Now, listen—this is where it gets good. See, I started having these freaky-ass nightmares after I got home—getting probed up my ass an shit, every night. So, I went to this shrink dude in Cheyenne who heard about my story and wanted to try his regression therapy or whatever. I went to his office and he did his twirly-doo-da with the pocket watch, steering my subconscious here and there. Little pieces started comin back to me. I remember a big, white light shining down on me in that clearing, being lifted up into it. I remember there was some other folk in there with me, all passed out, hanging up by these wires—like, they were floatin in these pods with wires all on em, I mean. I was laying on a table. I could move a little, but I was all dopey, like I was drunk off my ass. There was all these little gray guys foolin around in there, the fuckin aliens. And those alien goofs were taking turns jus twiddling around my dick n balls, fooling with my prostate. One of em was trying to milk my titties, man. They weren’t mean or nothin, though—gentle, to tell ya the truth. One of em—I’m guessing the boss or somethin— came in and took a look at me, an he say to the others, ‘Naw, he ain’t right. Send em on back.’ That’s exactly what that little gray dude said, too, word for word. ‘He ain’t right.’ I don’t know just what in the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

“Maybe they were wanting someone else,” I said, sarcastic.

“Y’know, maybe. But anyway, one of em was like, ‘Shit, oh well.’ He gave me a half-decent handjob, and then he put me in the chute to go back to earth. But right before he pulled that lever to lemme go, you know what that alien dude said to me?”

“What?”

“He told me the funniest motherfuckin joke I ever heard in my goddamned life.”

“He told you a joke?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell was the joke?”

“That’s the thing, boa, I cannot remember—that’s why I’m making this trip down to Roswell. I met some fellow abductees online a few months ago, and we’re gonna channel our willpowers all together so we can open up telepathic contact with them aliens. That’s how they talk to each other from here to that Alphuh Centooree, see, faster-than-light communication with their minds. God, I just need to hear that fuckin joke one more time, man.”

I didn’t quite know what to say, just chewed down the last of my spicy nuts and finished off the warm PBR. The scene outside was steeped in desert quiet as Seb slapped a twenty in my palm, tipped his hat with a smile and rode his bike off into the sunset. The cash got me a little jug of gas, enough to get me back to Cuervo where I spent the night looking up at the stars in the parking lot, splayed out in the bed of the Dakota. The desert night was cool and gave me a sense of peaceful abandon hard to describe. As I smoked through my last cig and thought about how this trip was going all wrong and how I missed my mom and dad and home, I thought I saw a shooting star make weird, jaggedy turns up in the sky, heading south. Roswell-bound, I figure, in the name of comedy.

guyliner, 2025

On Alpha Centauri Humor was first published by Citywide Lunch in 2025.